Journey of an African Refugee: A Review of Now Is the Time for Running

In the past two years, immigration has become a hot-button issue in the United States, with various states passing harsh immigration laws and vigilante groups patrolling the border. Living in a large country with little coverage of the outside world, people in the United States may not know that other countries have experienced large-scale immigration, and conflicts related to it as well. Civil strife and violent repression have driven citizens of several African countries to South Africa, where they, like many immigrants from Latin America, have been exploited in the workplace and targeted for vigilante violence. South African author Michael Williams, who has written several sports stories for young readers, portrays a refugee from Zimbabwe in his powerful new novel Now Is the Time for Running (Little, Brown, 2011).

When soldiers of dictator Robert Mugabe shoot nearly everyone in 15-year-old Deo’s village in Zimbabwe because not enough of them voted for the ruling party in a rigged election, Deo flees south with his developmentally disabled brother, Innocent, who is ten years older. After crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa, the two evade robbers and hitch a ride with a white farm owner who employs them in conditions hardly better than slavery. They fall prey to a coworker, a swindler who takes their meager earnings in exchange for a promised job but dumps them in the middle of a Johannesburg slum, where they find refuge under a highway bridge—at least until a xenophobic mob massacres dozens of immigrants. Two years later Deo, now totally alone, finds his way to a homeless shelter and a soccer team that competes in the Homeless World Cup on the eve of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa in 2010.

The novel is both bleak and inspiring, as Deo experiences unbelievable cruelty at the hands of fellow human beings and tries to find his place through soccer. As in the best sports stories for young readers, Williams’s descriptions of the matches capture the action, but he also creates stakes beyond the game. From the first game in his village with his friends, when Deo notices the soldiers, to matches near the farm where the refugees dodge hostile villagers who have lost their jobs to the low-wage workers, and finally to the Homeless World Cup, Williams ties the action on the field to the larger struggles of characters in crisis.